Lalla Unveiled

Last week, on my doorstep, I found, Lalla Unveiled: The Naked Voice of the Feminine, a book of poems by the 13th century Kashmirian poet, Lalla, with new translations by Jennifer Sundeen. Lalla was a wandering ascetic, mystic, seer, and prophet who danced through the streets reciting her poetic quatrains.

 To know the Self is a boat towed upon the ocean.

When will God ferry me across?

The rope is frayed, the clay pot uncooked, the water ebbs.

My soul is yearning to go home.

I share the arrival of this new book with you not only because I love listening to the words of this ancient Kashmirian sister, but I painted watercolors for this edition.

Married at twelve into a family, abused by her mother-in-law and husband, Lalla endured their harsh treatment for years. A spiritual seeker, Lalla knew there had to be a way out of her suffering. In her early twenties, she ran away from her husband’s household and met the yogi Sed Bayu who became her teacher. Once she completed her studies, Lalla set out on her own, a lone woman—husbandless, penniless, and homeless, but with the knowledge that the divinity resides within each of us.

 Slay your inner demons: lust, anger, desire,

Or their arrows will destroy your soul instead.

In meditation, with careful thought, feed them stillness and silence.

Then see they truly have such little hold.

Lalla tore off the binding cloth of the society to which she was born. Thread by thread she remade herself from within. A rebel and a seeker, she gave up the comforts of hearth and home to wander, always loving and always teaching. She didn’t follow a prescribed path or religion but discovered her own truths from within her own body.

 Then the washermen beat and dashed me on the stone

And rubbed me with clay and soap to whiten me

Then the tailor cut me piece by piece

Now, as finished cloth, I have found my way at last to Freedom.

Jennifer Sundeen, a yogi and healer, and mother of three daughters, is the founder of Durga Studio, Durga’s Red Tent, and Goddess Pilgrimages. She brings this background to her translations of Lalla’s quatrains, recognizing in some of them specific instructions for repeating mantras and practices of controlling the breath. 

 Thoughts are a wandering horse speeding across the sky.

In the twinkling of an eye they travel a hundred thousand miles.

The bridle of Self-Realization is knowing how to rein in these thoughts.

Controlling the breath will steady the chariot’s wheel.

Coleman Barks, the eminent translator of Rumi, Hafiz, as well as a book of Lalla’s poetry wrote, “Jen Sundeen is dancing and singing along with Lalla, in the same wisdom, the same joy!”

In these days when we are torn apart by acts of aggression and hatred, it is comforting to read the words of a woman who lived through patriarchal persecution, personal betrayal, and social tumult to find freedom and peace, on her terms, in her own way.

She who knows herself as all others,

She who knows no difference between night and day,

She who knows herself as not separate,

She is the one who truly sees God.

In July, I will be offering a watercolor painting session, Lalla’s Lake. It is said that one day Lalla was late returning home with the family’s water jug because she stopped to meditate at the local shrine. Her husband, suspecting her of infidelity, struck the jug balanced on her head. The jug shattered to bits, but the water remained in the shape of the jug. Lalla went inside, filled the empty containers, and poured the remaining water outside. This water became a lake, and was known as Lalla’s Lake all over Kashmir. We’ll dip our brushes into the pond at Old Frog Pond Farm and let Lalla’s poetry inspire our painting.

There will be a Zoom launch on Saturday, June 20 at 5pm ET. Information to join this event can be found here and you can also order a copy of the book.

Pond Alchemy

The water at Old frog Pond Farm travels south from the Elizabeth Brook, through a culvert under Eldridge Road, fills the pond, and empties over a waterfall into wetlands that feed the Concord and Assabet Rivers. 

Water Meets Water, Watercolor, 2018, Linda Hoffman

Pond Alchemy

sheets of angled rain

pierce the pond

water meets water

lily pads

host their guests

a frog and beads of water

attentive to water

a blue heron

waits —

the wise say,

‘the way of water

is to flow’

a black cormorant

grasps a snag

winging water droplets

tree swallows

pluck insects

splash of water

the wise teach,

‘water never

harms water’

weaving threads

of iridescent water

dragonflies hover.

Early Morning Pond View, June 2, 2020, Linda Hoffman

The Birth of Fruit

May we spread the seeds of true justice across our nation.
May we water them with our grief, and tend them with great love.

Spring’s robe swishes as she walks through the rows of apple trees, the small fruit now covered with white clay to protect it from the egg-laying stings of the plum curculio beetle.

On the high-bush blueberries, the white bell-like corollas dry, then fall, exposing small green fruit.

The mulberries pop out from smooth branches like furry caterpillars,

 and the husks of the peaches fall to the ground revealing first fuzz. 

Fruits are ovaries, designed to protect the all important seeds. Peppers, tomatoes, as well as squash are technically fruits, but we think of them as vegetables. Asparagus aren’t fruits, but because they are a perennial crop, we give them two long rows in the berry patch. The stalks shoot up overnight.

Rhubarb is technically a vegetable, but it’s most often cooked in pies or with sugar to sweeten its tart taste, and therefore, is often thought to be a fruit. Our favorite recipe for rhubarb is stewed with strawberries and a bit of honey or maple syrup.

Not far away, the blackberry buds entice as if there weren’t hiding sharp thorns.

Blackberries ripen well before the red raspberries whose canes are mowed to the ground in early spring. Fall raspberries grow four to five feet high, bud, flower, and bear fruit all in one season.

Seedless table grapes are a new crop for the farm, the vines are only beginning their long climb to maturity.

Finally, spring embraces summer, and the strawberry ripening begins.

Photos: Linda Hoffman and Ariel Matisse

An Artist in the Orchard

Usually I carry a spade, loppers, clippers, a weeding tool, a basket with rubber ties, and wire into the orchard. But like a plein air painter who leaves the studio and brings paints and brushes to the subject, I bring a notebook and pen, and sit in a patch of purple violets under a Golden Delicious apple tree.

Along with the violets, two varieties of clover are growing—mammoth red and white Dutch. I love clover under my apple trees—and daffodils and dandelions, mountain mint and comfrey, iron weed, valerian, St. John’s wort, bee balm, even stinging nettles. The more companion plants, the richer the soil.

Notebook page 5/16/20

Most people don’t realize that one apple bud opens to become a cluster of five or six flower buds. The king blossom is in the center; it’s the first to grow and the first to open. It’s surrounded by the harem waiting to take over if anything should happen to the king.

In a stellar pollination year, most of the secondary blossoms will be pollinated and the tree becomes a cloud of delicate wings. The downside is too many children. The apples will be small, with more disease and pest pressure, and less air circulation and sunlight, not beneficial for the crop. 

On this particular Golden Delicious tree, I see only a few blossoms. Golden Delicious have a propensity to be biennial—a riot of blossoms one year, and the next only a scattering. Orchardists can control this tendency by “thinning” the trees, removing a portion of the young fruit. As an organic grower, I don’t have an array of chemical thinners to choose from, but I can hand thin. On our youngest trees, we pluck off all the blossoms, discouraging such precocious behavior; these trees need to focus on growth, not reproduction! On the younger trees, we remove some of the fruitlets, leaving a few inches between apples. But on the mature trees, when the fruit set is crazy-good, our feeble efforts to thin hardly make a difference. One tree alone could occupy an afternoon, and we don't have a month to devote to thinning. I leave the Golden Delicious to do as they are inclined. Other trees, like the newer varieties of Liberty and Honey Crisp, are bred to discourage this trait.

The upside of this off-year is all energy goes into growing large and shiny leaves—optimal photosynthesis. A time of repose, a sabbatical to recharge. As I sit in its shade, I think about what the tree offers other than fruit. Maybe nutritive support to other trees and to the soil around its roots? Maybe sequestering more carbon? Maybe that strange notion, self-care?

This Golden Delicious tree is over 45 years old, and some orchard experts say it should be replaced because it’s old and leaning too far south. But I’m enthralled by its wayward slant, its zig-zag desire to find equipoise. In the photo below you can see the young branch I’m training to become a new central leader if necessary. 

Being both orchardist and artist is at times contradictory. Should I spray a particularly nasty, but approved organic material like lime sulfur to thin the Golden Delicious so they don’t fall into biennial production? After all, we have 28 mature Golden Delicious trees with no fruit, and that’s a lot of real estate in a small orchard. The truth is I appreciate the gnarly old trees and the young slender spindles, the trees with no apples and the trees loaded with fruit.

I finish taking notes and gather violets to put in a jar of olive oil for next fall when we will make salves and balms. A pair of cedar waxwings are courting in one of the Gala trees, and two orioles sing from high in a Summer Sweet. The woodchuck peeks out of a nearby hole, and upon seeing me, ducks back down. The geese hiss. On my walk back to the house, I snap off two fat purple asparagus no doubt planted by some robin scratching for worms near the trunk of a Cortland in the first row. Today I’m an artist in the orchard. Tomorrow I’ll return with other tools.

Apple Tree, Watercolor and Pencil, 2020, Linda Hoffman